My sister, Andrea, is a physical education (gym) teacher. She gets nearly every kid in middle school mainstreamed into her classes. At the beginning of each year there is always a day the kids don't put on their gym clothes because Andrea spends time assigning locks. To keep the little darlings busy one year while they waited in line, she passed out clipboards, pencils and pieces of paper that said, "The world would be a better place if _____________________."

Now most other gym teachers would have junked these essays without reading them. I mean, the reason they became middle school gym teachers instead of middle school history teachers is that they didn't want to read hundreds of bad essays. That, however, is not my sister's style. Andrea actually took the time to read every essay and comment on the contents. Most of the kids waxed poetic about ending racism and/or achieving world peace. These are worthy and noble goals, of course, but the essays were pretty much all the same. But in the middle of the stack of essays was one submitted by one of the special day class kids mainstreamed into gym class. His entire essay read "The world would be a better place if everybody had donuts." Andrea gave him an A+ and commended him for his original thinking.